China to invest more in Africa’s upstream sector

China’s national oil companies (NOCs) are increasing their investment in Africa with the aim of securing oil supplies to help feed rising domestic energy demand

Within the next five years, the NOCs are projected to be the fourth highest capital spending (capex) in Africa’s upstream sector behind global counterparts BP Plc, Royal Dutch Shell Plc and Eni SpA.

This is according to GlobalData, a data and analytics company, which also revealed that US$15bn of upstream investment in Africa will come from three Chinese NOCs – China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC), China Petroleum and Chemical Corporation (Sinopec), and China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC).

The data company stated that while domestic asset developments remain the core strategies in the near-to-mid-term, the investment of the three NOCs in Africa comes first among all overseas regions and accounts for almost 30 per cent of the combined international upstream capex.

Cao Chai, an upstream analyst at GlobalData, commented, “Around two-thirds of the spending is in Nigeria, Angola, Uganda and Mozambique. Sinopec and CNOOC are well established in Nigeria and Angola while CNPC has a stake in the Rovuma LNG project in Mozambique.”

“The surging domestic energy demand has led China to diversify its natural resources imports and the upstream footprint of China’s NOCs has increased substantially to nearly 20 African countries,” he added.

“China’s NOCs intend to position themselves as global players in the international oil market. With CNPC and Sinopec’s new projects also coming online, the total production in Africa for the three companies is projected to be between 430,000 and 440,000 boed post 2020, accounting for nearly 20 per cent of the their overseas volumes,” he concluded.